Road Trip Stats: Month 48 – December 2021

For the first three years of our road trip we managed to stay under budget over the course of each year as a whole.

Coming in to December 2021, we were still under budget for the year, but knew we had higher-than-average spending on accommodation in the final month of the year. That meant I was pessimistic about our chances of staying under budget for 2022 overall.

Was that pessimism justified or did we somehow manage to limit our spending in other categories to make it a four year streak of staying under budget? Read on to find out.

Miles Driven

December started with 168,046 miles on our car’s odometer, while by the end of the month its reading was 170,461. That means we drove 2,415 miles in December; I’d predicted in last month’s stats that we’d drive 2,450 miles, so that was pretty accurate.

Our mileage during January 2022 should be significantly less. Shae and I will be staying in a few locations during that time, but there are fewer than 100 miles total between the various hotels. We’ll be doing some driving to visit places during that time, so I’ll predict that we’ll drive 850 miles in January.

Money Spent

Our daily budget on the road trip last year was $100 (it went up to $125 per day from January 1, 2022). That means our budget for December was $3,100. Unfortunately we spent $3,795.65 last month which means we went $695.65 over budget.

That overspend was fairly significant, but is pretty much accounted for by the fact that we spent more than $2,100 on accommodation last month. That’s far higher than our average monthly spend on hotels and Airbnbs because only five nights of December were paid for with points or free night certificates – the rest of the time was spent in hotels and Airbnbs we paid for in full or in part. I say ‘in part’ because Shae’s mom and stepdad joined us for 11 days over Christmas and we shared the cost of the Airbnbs we booked.

Here’s a breakdown of our spending categories in December 2021…

…and here’s a chart tracking our overall spending for the year.

Unfortunately December’s overspend meant that we finished 2021 having overspent for the year as a whole too. Our budget for the year was $35,050 (this accounts for a reduced amount in August when we spent much of the month overseas), while we spent $35,577.23 over the course of the year. That means we overspent by $527.23 in 2021 which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t bad at all seeing as it means we only overspent by an average of less than $1.50 per day. It’s still a shame though seeing as it breaks what would’ve been a four year streak of staying under budget.

Accommodation Cost

We stayed in seven different places last month – here’s a breakdown of what it cost.

December 1-16: Airbnb in Portland, OR. This was a continuation of our stay which began in November. We booked a 31 night stay which meant there weren’t any taxes payable on the stay. That limited the cost to $69.45 per night, but it got cheaper than that because we paid with Airbnb gift cards we bought at a discount. That reduced our cost to $62.73 per night.

December 16-18: La Quinta Grants Pass, OR (I won’t be writing a review of this property). We’d originally planned on staying at a Holiday Inn Express nearby, but I subsequently noticed that we had some Wyndham points expiring and so decided to use some of those to book this stay instead.

It normally costs 15,000 points per night, but I have the Wyndham Business Earner credit card which offers a 10% discount on award stays which reduced the cost to 13,500 points per night.

December 18-21: Airbnb in Fort Bragg, CA. This was a two bedroom house near the seaglass beach in Fort Bragg and was the start of our 11 days with Shae’s mom and stepdad. This cost $143.03 per night, the cost of which we split with them.

December 21-26: Airbnb in Vallejo, CA. This was a two bedroom condo in Vallejo which is within driving distance of Sonoma and Napa Valley that cost $176.88 per night, the cost of which we also shared with Shae’s mom and stepdad.

December 26-29: Airbnb in Carmel Valley, CA. This was a nice two bedroom cottage in Carmel Valley which was only 20 minutes from Carmel-By-The-Sea. Its nightly cost was $240.10 which again was split between us.

December 29-31: La Quinta Bakersfield North, CA (I won’t be writing a review of this property). It was a fairly long drive from Carmel Valley to our next destination (San Diego) and I had to work that day, so we stayed a couple of nights in Bakersfield along the way.

We had some further Wyndham points expiring which is why we chose this property. It costs 15,000 points per night normally, but the 10% discount on award nights from my Wyndham card reduced that to 13,500 points per night.

December 31-January 1: Westin Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, CA (here’s my review). We booked this using a Marriott free night certificate; it would’ve cost 40,000 points and so I used the certificate I chose after earning Titanium status last year (that’s one of the Choice benefit options).

Hotel Points Earned

December was a bit of a quieter month for earning hotel points, but we still managed to boost our balances in some ways.

There weren’t any significant changes; the IHG points were from the Holiday Inn Express stay we cancelled to stay at the La Quinta Grants Pass instead, the World of Hyatt points came from both spending on our credit cards as well as bonus points from hitting Milestone Rewards (staying a certain number of nights at Hyatt properties), while the Marriott points were mostly from spending on my Amex Marriott card as that earned 10 points per dollar on PayPal purchases until December 31.

Here’s a breakdown of what we earned.

• IHG Rewards – 34,530
• Hilton Honors – 14,904
• Marriott Bonvoy – 13,847
• World of Hyatt – 32,721
• Radisson Rewards – 0
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 18,497
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 2,127
• Capital One – 0

Hotel Points Redeemed

We started booking our January and February stays last month which means we made a number of award bookings. As a result we had quite a few large redemptions:

• IHG Rewards – 69,000
• Hilton Honors – 314,000
• Marriott Bonvoy – 0
• World of Hyatt – 92,000
• Radisson Rewards – 0
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 54,100
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
• Capital One – 0

Total Hotel Points Balances

We redeemed more hotel points than we earned in December, although we still have very healthy points balances overall.

• IHG Rewards – 1,023,064
• Hilton Honors – 838,072
• Marriott Bonvoy – 670,227
• World of Hyatt – 114,703
• Radisson Rewards – 93,092
• Choice Privileges – 99,744
• Wyndham Rewards – 102,007
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 10
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 845,617
• Capital One – 185,232

Here’s a table providing all of the aforementioned totals:

Hotel Free Night Certificates

In addition to all our points, we have a number of free night certificates for certain hotel chains, most of which are received when renewing our credit cards each year, but others are earned from credit card spend or staying a certain number of nights per year.

Here’s how many free night certificates Shae and I had between us at the end of the year:

• IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 5
• Hilton (any property worldwide) – 3
• Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 3
• Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 2
• Hyatt (category 1-4) – 4
• Hyatt (category 1-7) – 0

Blog Stats

We were pretty busy in December, especially with Shae’s mom and stepdad joining us on the road trip. As a result we published fewer posts than normal:

• Number of blog posts published – 10
• Page views – 14,978

Final Thoughts

It was a little disappointing to end the year by going over budget enough to push us over budget for the year as a whole, but seeing as that was just due to spending more than normal on accommodation rather than lavish spending, it’s not a big deal.

With us increasing our budget from $100 to $125 per day, we’ll hopefully stay well under budget over the course of the year – hopefully our spending doesn’t expand to fill that space!